Rise and Fall
by fidefortitude
Summary: He keeps telling himself he hasn't changed. He keeps coming back and every time tells himself it will be the last. He watches his son with tears in his eyes and refuses to admit he is different for it.


He had broken the rules before.

Crowley was no stranger to bending and twisting destiny to fit his own requirements- ever since it had become apparent to him that having Lucifer on top in Hell would somewhat undermine his own existence. He had assisted the Winchesters in cancelling the apocalypse- surely, one of the most important events in history to have been foretold.

But if someone was to ask him what the biggest rule he had broken was, destroying Heaven's plans and keeping Hell and Earth intact didn't even come close. Not anymore.

He absently traced a finger around his glass of scotch- a terrible habit, fiddling with objects in his hands, but one he had developed recently. Or rather, redeveloped. He was trying to stop doing it, but it was more difficult when his mind wandered.

Which it _shouldn't_.

He drove his glass onto his desk with a noise of irritation, inspecting instead the numbers he had drawn up of Hell's demons- Abaddon's former loyalists, his loyalists, those who had wavered between camps, and the dead of Hell's civil war.

His list of loyalists (at least, those he was fairly sure were loyalists) was frustratingly low.

Clearly, he had work to do to regain followers. He knew now the perilous ground he stood on- he had thought that demonkind would blindly follow any leader given to them, but since the Winchesters had handcuffed him to a chair in a chapel almost a year ago-

He found himself absently tearing a small hole in one of the sheets of paper. He stilled, letting the wedge of names and affiliations fall to his desk as he grabbed up his glass of scotch and emptied it.

He kept going backwards, kept looking to the past. It wasn't _right._ Demons never trawled through their memories unless it suited them, unless they had reason to.

But since the night the angels fell, Crowley had been doing it far too much, unsolicited of his own wants and needs.

And since that day in the Humboldt Hotel, his memories had been far too specifically focused.

_Bang._

He had put his scotch glass down with enough force to shatter the glass. He growled and clicked his fingers, willing the components of the glass to melt back together.

Then sighed, leaning back in his executive office chair and dragging a hand across his face in defeat.

He had broken the rules before. He had stopped the_ apocalypse_, for God's sake.

So why did he keep thinking about his one little avoidance of time travel?

Crowley shook his head furiously, stood and walked away from his desk, mentally tearing open a hole in reality and walking straight through, pushing through the void between spaces as easily as breathing.

Hell wouldn't miss him for just a minute.

He pushed through the spaces between reality, forcing himself onto the earthly plane again. Around him, the air was cool and crisp, the night above him tainted with the lights of New York.

New York. That stereotypical immigration centre. Crowley had been almost furious to hear that Gavin had chosen, of all places, to tempt fate and try and get to the 'New World' once more, except this time through the air rather than across the sea.

Crowley had been almost furious. He had been mostly worried.

It sickened him.

He took off at a brisk walk through the night, the ambient neon lights of a city that never rested shifting and changing across his face as he passed them by- light and shadow flickering and fading in equal measure. The people in the city walked past, their eyes cast downward and their bodies angled competitively for space, people pushing and weaving past one another in desperation to get where they were going. Crowley walked through them as if they weren't there. Partly due to well-practised and honed body language- partly because he was subtly persuading each person approaching to move out of the way of him through various supernatural mediums.

Being the King of Hell has its perks.

He had a destination in mind; he knew it because he had been repeatedly coming to it for weeks. But he needed not to be seen. He twisted his hand in a circular motion, using the motion to channel his energy into bending light around him and forcing him out of sight. A few passers-by looked up and around in faint confusion, but otherwise nobody marked his sudden transition to invisibility.

He walked into the New York Public Library in silence, moving unseen through dusty shelves and whisper-filled reading rooms. A warm, calm feeling of silence settled upon him, a silence he attributed to the atmosphere of a place of learning.

It wasn't an atmosphere he had been used to until recently, and as such it was one he appreciated all the more. He wasn't the only one who felt the same.

He found him sat in the midst of the grandeur of the main reading room of the library- surrounded loosely by hundreds of people and dozens of books. Crowley watched Gavin silently and admiringly pore over each page of his current reading material, flicking through pages as quickly as he could read them. Curiosity overtook Crowley's self-imposed boundary between him and his son- he stole up, standing invisibly behind Gavin, and read over his shoulder.

He was surprised to find it to be the 'Certified Paralegal Review Manual', until the tumblers clicked into place and Crowley realised it wasn't surprising at all.  
After all, Gavin was his son- and his son had just been gifted with the ability to read. It made perfect sense that the boy would be a natural expert in law- two minutes with Crowley in a room and Gavin had negotiated himself into eternal bliss after his death.

Crowley smiled fondly.

Then stalled, straightened, and walked a good few metres away from Gavin, taking a few deep breaths that he didn't need and dragging a hand backwards through his hair.

He was a demon. He was the _King of Hell._ Humanity didn't matter to him. They could all _burn_ as far as he was concerned. He could burn down this library _right now_ and he wouldn't feel a thing but the heat on his face. He was a cold, calculating, _ruthless_ leader.  
_  
He was lying to himself._

He looked back helplessly at Gavin. The boy didn't even know he was watching him- even if Crowley had been visible to the human eye, Gavin was far too engrossed in his book to know who was there.

To know that his father, the father that had only ever been a burden and a threat to him, was watching him fulfilling his dreams of getting to be someone in America- and trying not to cry.

Crowley shook his head furiously as he began to feel his emotions coming to the fore. This had to stop. He couldn't keep coming back. He was just prolonging the torturous visits out of a twisted notion of worry for his son- he had to drop it to keep Gavin safe. Eventually someone in Hell was going to notice his daily excursions to New York. Eventually someone was going to follow him.

_Eventually he was going to break down, and then where would he be?_

Crowley took one last look at Gavin Macleod, his son, his only son, the one he had broken the rules for, and the one he was risking destroying the timestream for. He rubbed furiously at his eyes.

And then he turned away, the fabric of reality shifting and warping around him, and he was gone.

* * *

**There's a serious lack of Gavin Macleod fanfiction, which I here attempt to rectify. I'm also adding to the amount of unbelievably out of character fanfiction, but there we go. **

**It's also more sad than I intended it to be. If it makes you feel any better, Gavin probably also has a puppy. Look at his face and tell me that guy wouldn't own a puppy.**

**As ever, reviews are appreciated and criticism is welcomed with open arms and a vaguely pleading expression! Have a lovely day!**


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